Just remembered a conversation I had with a friend who now works for the agency that regulate the media in Singapore a few weeks ago. The debate we had is “What is a Media?”.
Anyway, he holds the view that all these “New Media” stuff he heard are just nonsense, that it is nothing more than a webpage put together by amateurs. Afterall, the concepts has being around for years and now people are slapping a new label to it thats all.
I hold a different belief: What defines a media is the audience. A newspaper without readers is not a media but simple webpage with 100-thousands readers daily is one. The underlying technology (be it ink & paper or computer & internet) does not matter.
Currently, “mainstream media” is limited to handful printed publication (newspaper, magazine etc). So, if a “new media” has more audience than a “mainstream media”, what happened? Do we change the Act or do we change the definition?
Given MICA Minister (Dr. Lee Boon Yang) has often stated he prefers a light-touch towards the “new media”, I am glad that I did not convience my friend and we get to keep the definition as it is right now.
And to those Singapore bloggers who tries to argue how powerful the new media is, I think you are doing a disservice to the blogging community.
